


Nightmare

by anathemafen



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 11:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14331492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anathemafen/pseuds/anathemafen
Summary: Cullen wakes from another nightmare, but this time his love is there to comfort him.





	Nightmare

Dread. 

That’s what he would call it, if asked. 

Pure unadulterated dread. 

It weighs heavy as his eyelids are finally forced open, clings even as he sits up in sweat-soaked sheets and heaves in lungful after lungful of air. 

His throat feels raw as if the screams wrenched from him in the Fade were not mere manifestations of a past horror. And he must remind himself again and again that it was a _past horror_. 

All but jamming the heels of his palms into his eyes, Cullen kicks off the suddenly oppressive sheets and swings his legs over the bed. How long has it been since he’s had a full night of rest? How long has it been since he’s not woken up with the taste of torture on his tongue and a heart beating so rapidly he is sure death beckons? 

Too long. 

A strangled sound leaves him as a hand touches his shoulder. Instinctively Cullen flinches, but this touch doesn’t turn into terror’s talons, this touch isn’t ripping into him, this touch is soft and warm and comes attached to a woman who, for whatever reason, has chosen _him_ to love. 

Cullen was a mess of knots, barbed things that cut small slices into him, building up over time to conglomerate into the raw wound he carried for years. Left to fester, it turned him into a cornered animal, all bared teeth and sharp edges to anyone who came near. Feelings became muted, laughter became stale, and Cullen became a shell of that golden-haired boy who had left to become a Templar, a Champion of the Just…

And then, oh, how easily she had disentangled him from himself.

She picked him apart without him even noticing it, untangled his mess of knots with deft fingers and bright smiles. And even when she pricked her fingers she didn’t pull back but bled along with him; a strange, beautiful creature who had literally fell out of the Fade. And suddenly his laughter stopped being foreign, his aversion to touch turned into a craving for it, and that rage-fueled fire that had been burning in him since Kirkwall slowly went out. 

“You are safe,” she whispers now trailing fingers over his chest, ensuring the remnants of the cold clench of panic has let go and dispersed. 

He lets himself be pulled back down and it is in these moments his love burns fiercest for her, and feels her love burn fiercest for him. In these moments where he is as vulnerable as he ever will be. And it’s not only the fact that her touch and her voice and her very presence can calm his heart. 

It’s that Cullen can lie back and _feel_. He can feel, he can let go, he can stop tangling himself up and finally let his wound scar over. 

“You are safe, my love,” she says again as he nuzzles into her neck and wraps trembling arms around her. Cullen focuses on her voice, on her fingers running through his hair, on the softness of her skin and when he closes his eyes again, this time, dread is not there to greet him.


End file.
